Allow me to waste your time.

Google drops GMail service for a couple hours as the result of an upgrade. The conclusion: Cloud Computing is a boondoggle. Even tiny businesses should have a backup if they use it.

Yet, when my in-house IT staff drops email service for a day to upgrade their email server to the newest Mark 6000 model and has no redundant system, do I lose faith in them and start thinking about outsourcing to Google?

While the idea of outsourcing IT to Google is appealing, the reality is that companies — even very small companies — need redundant systems. “Given that our company relies on Google’s Gmail and GTalk service, our operations came to a standstill this afternoon,” blogger Om Malik wrote on his site. “We aren’t a large company, but the losses are very real, especially in productivity.”